


Head's Been Spinning (Around and Around)

by MarcellaBianca



Series: Since You've Been Around [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Academics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Professors, Anxious Chris Evans, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Fairy Tale Logic, Fluff and Angst, Longing, M/M, Pining, Pining Sebastian Stan, Shy Sebastian Stan, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-20 08:16:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaBianca/pseuds/MarcellaBianca
Summary: Sebastian is five years old when he hears his first fairy tale.





	Head's Been Spinning (Around and Around)

**Author's Note:**

> Seb's POV!

When he's five years old, Sebastian hears his first fairy tale.

He'd been familiar with the old stories from home - nightmare fuel, really. Vampires and werewolves. Old wizened women who curse pregnant women. But this is something different and wholly, shockingly alive to his ears. 

It's due to his mother, who finds a small chapbook of works by Charles Perrault. The thing, with cracked yellow pages, is nearly thirty years old, stuffed behind some old textbooks in a used bookshop in Constanta. She reads "Cinderella" to Sebastian and he's gone from the first sentence. It's the idea of transformation, really. Attempting the impossible for some beautiful outcome, helped along by godmothers with wings. Sebastian falls hard, with a thud, into the enchanted ground.

When he and his mother move to Vienna Sebastian discovers the Brothers Grimm, and his experience of the 'fairy tale' as a sparkling respite from the demons and punishing crones he'd grown up on are shattered. These aren't just tales, these are warning signs. Talismans against the fires of hell, wrapped in the gauze that once held bloody feet. Pushed along in a box filled with nails and spikes. 

It spooks him. More than from back in Romania, really. Before, what freaked Sebastian out were scenes of students screaming by in beat-up Dacias with desecrated flags hanging out the windows. Now, it's of himself stuffed into iron-hot punishment, forced to dance to death.

As he grows, and moves to America, and begins his literature studies in earnest, Sebastian begins to understand why these stories existed. Part French court satire, part harbinger of immortal doom if the listener didn't behave, part religious doctrine, part nationalist fervor for a Germany that didn't exist. But it's the ones that promise a happy ending for all that he clings to, beyond the criticisms and academic articles he's written. Those are the ones he curls up with at night.  

* * *

 

He might be a little bit in love. Maybe.

Sebastian knows it's a problem, but he's taking care of it. Maybe.

It's all that teacher's fault. Sebastian sees those broad shoulders and sweetly red flannel shirt stretching over obnoxiously big pectorals that shouldn't be so taut and muscular on a  _professor's schedule._  Sebastian's stomach does something it hasn't done since tenth grade, when he managed to kiss Chace Crawford under the baseball field bleachers.

[Sebastian's still proud of that one - he was chubby off too many new American foods, and Chace was a beautifully clumsy gazelle of a young man, and he kissed  _Sebastian_ , and it was everything in that moment.]

[Sebastian kissed him, to be honest. He may have been awkward with a thick accent but he knew what he wanted, and knew how to get it.]

Sebastian knows the other man's name is Chris Evans from the small opening spiel all the established professors gave at the beginning of welcome week.  _"Hi, I'm Chris. Originally from Boston - what's the other thing we had to say - oh our academic interests, thanks Mackie - American Literature, specifically 18th to 19th century, but I dabble in contemporary when I feel like getting a little dangerous - shut up, Mackie - and uh, one fun fact? I have a dog, his name's Dodger, he's the best dog_ ever _, don't even fight me on it, you will lose."_

Chris Evans is something else. From another fucking planet. Some kind of fry cook on Venus. He's a solid wall of humanity, standing off to the side of the welcome barbecue, talking to a gorgeous dark-skinned man, and at one point he laughs, Christ, Chris _laughs_ , and it could light Cinderella's mother's magicked tree. Could melt the ice in the Snow Queen's hair. Could charm the Romanian zmue and keep him from stealing someone away in the night.

Sebastian can't move. His eyes trace the line of Chris Evans's jaw now as he laughs, the sound barely contained in his jaw. The grass sways toward it. The sun stays on the horizon a little bit longer to accommodate that glow. That life. 

The glow touches him just briefly, as Sebastian stands inspecting an array of burgers next to the grill. Chris Evans approaches, and Sebastian's natural inclination is to shut down, to disengage. He manages to blurt out one-word answers to Chris's perfectly friendly queries, then excuses himself to the bathroom where his forehead gets very acquainted with the door.  _Thunk, thunk, thunk._

* * *

Sebastian's never been a particularly shy person when it comes to men. From Chace on up to college, when he fucked his first proper boyfriend in a locked quiet floor study room at the library, hand fused over Will's mouth so they wouldn't invite security, he's generally a pretty confident pursuer. 

Chris Evans has him all sorts of fucked up. It's the other man's fault. He's too... _much._ Biceps, jaw, laugh, crinkles around the eyes. It's an overdose of masculinity, freezing him where he stands. Sebastian isn't normally like this. He's able to come up with amazing turns of phrase, the perfect ways to flirt, to seduce. Things he's picked up from years of blossoming from that chubby duckling to someone his best friend from home, Charles, called "hotter than a motherfucker has any right to be." 

Chris Evans makes him bashful. Makes him want to sidestep, and cling to doorways when he sees Chris coming. God, Chris makes him feel _unintelligent_ , which is ridiculous, he's a brand new professor at an established university (granted, only an assistant professor and Chris is an associate, a higher position, a position of power,  _you're getting off track, Sebastian_ ), he fought for a year on the job market to get employment after receiving his doctorate at the University of Connecticut - best children's lit program in the country - and some guy makes him want to openly drool on the street?

The months pass. He grows to know Chris more. Chris is a human puppy dog, with a backbone of steel, and he looks at Sebastian dead in the eyes when he talks to him. He meets Dodger, and has to concede that Chris was right - the dog is the best dog on the planet. His owner, too, is shooting up the list of Sebastian's favorite humans. He wants to cuddle with him in front of the nightly news, and then see how fast he can make that strong frame shatter into pieces under his hands. 

Simple wants, really. Sebastian's a simple man. 

* * *

When Director Jackson emails him with the changeup in who will be observing his class, he murmurs a long, low "Fuuuuuuuuuck" to himself in the faculty computer lab. He can barely string together a sentence about his pedagogy in front of Chris Evans. Now he's expected to teach for an hour and a half on Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar and expect it all to make any semblance of sense when what he really wants to do is bend Chris Evans over the nearest desk and bang him like old erasers?

This is bad. This is very bad. 

It doesn't end up being as catastrophic as he thought. He just pretends Chris isn't even in the room, and lets his mind go to the calm place it always settles at when it's truly in the zone. They talk about Bluebeard, which allows Sebastian to make several points about misogyny and satire in the works of Perrault and the intersection they provide. At the end of class, he's packing up his bag when he becomes painfully aware of a six foot two heat-seeking missile behind him. 

"You're great," Chris says, at a level that probably shouldn't send bolts of lightning through Sebastian's guts. "Really enjoyed how you tied everything together." He sounds removed. His hands play with the cuffs on his shirt, rolled up to the elbow. Sebastian turns right back around to stuff his notebook into his pack. It's either that, or drop straight to his knees in the middle of his classroom. "Thanks," he says quickly. "These kids are great. Really invested."

"Yeah, but you're...you're very engaging. It's - ah, fuck - it's almost magical, the way you work in here."

Chris sounds hesitant. Sebastian can't breathe.

He doesn't quite know how he makes it out of there. He gets back to his senses once he's at home, in bed, with a hand shoved into his sleep pants and his teeth set firmly in his lower lip.

* * *

Something is terribly wrong.

The cold whistles down the hallways, through the office doors and into Sebastian's bones. Chris Evans has gone from a reliable presence in the hallways, a friendly smile on the way to the lounge, a casual conversation partner over the coffee machine in the Writing Program office, to a bare whisper on the walls. Sebastian's even spotted him coming into rooms where Sebastian is present, only to scuttle away like a startled crab. 

Sebastian runs through every interaction they've ever had. All perfectly serviceable and the sweet bashfulness Chris had displayed that day in the classroom. After that, Sebastian had gone to observe one of Chris's seminars, and jokingly told him it was the first time he'd been thoroughly invested in American Revolution artifacts. Chris went pink around the apples of his cheeks, and Sebastian wanted to die or write a hundred fairy tales based on that color. Chris has smiles just for him after that, and it turns Sebastian into a human firework.

Now, nothing. Now, he walks into a room and Chris walks right back out. Any interactions they have are quick, cold, and nearly wordless. The embers are cooling and left behind in the grass.

God, it shouldn't hurt as much as it does, but every time Chris walks away Sebastian thinks of that old fairy tale, with the red hot iron shoes, but it's an entire suit of it, encasing him in flame and leaving him there to rot.

* * *

 

He walks past Chris's office door four times. Each time, he gets a little closer to going in. Each time, he convinces himself he's being ridiculous, that Chris just doesn't like him. That it's something he's going to have to deal with.

Dammit, he shouldn't just have to  _deal_ with it. Fuck being a friend, or even anything more. Chris is a colleague. They should at least be able to be in the same room together without someone getting ghosted.

It's now or never.

* * *

 

They break apart, both equally loathe to do so, Chris's mouth catching slightly on Sebastian's lower lip as the kiss ends. Sebastian hadn't really thought about it, he'd just leaned in and taken what he thought was being offered. Turns out it was an exceptionally well-planned point. Chris kisses with a slight incredulity that melted into something so pure it makes Sebastian's teeth ache. At some point one of them had closed Chris's office door. Probably Chris, since his back is now against it, hip nearly pressed against the doorknob. How was that comfortable, Sebastian wonders, amongst other things. How did his hands wind up framing Chris's face? How did Chris's arms end up around Sebastian's waist? How did everything turn into Sebastian's dream of a happy ending? 

He isn't sure, but he's ready for his own fairy tales to begin.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be one more chapter. There will be porn.
> 
> Comments and Kudos make me so happy!
> 
> Note: I got my Masters from the University of Connecticut, and Sebastian is right - it is the best children’s lit program in the country. Not that I’m biased or anything.
> 
> Sebastian's concentration is essentially mine, and it's what I teach for freshman composition. :)


End file.
